Author: Madox

HTC Sense UI on HTC Magic

Well I’ve installed the official HTC Magic update with the new Sense UI a week ago and I have to say I’m pleasant amazed at HTC’s work with the Sense UI and how responsive the update is.  Just purely love it.

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Other than the annoying thing that I couldn’t download it using Firefox or Linux, and that you need to update using Windows and HTC Sync… its awesome.  Even though it’s a Taiwan ChungHwa ROM, there is an English option luckily 🙂

In addition to the Sense UI and its wonderful feature set, another interesting but hidden away feature is “Mobile Internet Sharing”, aka tethering!  Azilink is now redundant with this new firmware, and honestly I was getting annoyed with Azilink’s performance and constant dropping out.  On Ubuntu at least, it was ‘plug-and-play’ without any other tricks.  Awesome.

Now I’m not so jealous about all the HTC Hero’s my friends and relatives have…

Photos (pretty boring) after the break.

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Toys from China – Remote Control Beer Caddie With Guns!

No seriously I mean it, toys.  Not electronics gadgets or a new laptop but real toys.  Albeit toys you probably don’t want to give to your children.

I give you MILITARISED BEER CADDIE!

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This thing is AWESOME. Felt the joys of being a child again opening a cool present… but seriously with that turret it is not a toy for kids!  It’ll also happily carry two cans of beer around the place for you (only had soft drink to test it with…oops out of beer…).

It was originally purchased to be taken apart… but I don’t think I’ll have the heart take this beautiful thing apart.  Maybe just the turret can be dismantled…its probably too dangerous on anyway 😉

PS : Not in anyway affiliated with the manufacturer or trying to sell any…

PPS : This is a 1 minute post just bragging about this wonderful toy…

PPPS : Somewhere a Roboraptor photo sneaked into the gallery below…oops…

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HKCCF – Bargain hunters and virgins with DSLRs

My one day stopover in Hong Kong coincided with the Hong Kong Computer and Communication Festival and being such a gadget person I popped along to see what its about.  There was a torrent of people and a 4825km queue to get in, 30 minutes later and $20HKD entrance fee I was in [Tourists had a special line in the end…but I forgot to bring my passport].

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3D Printed Propellers

Parcels galore!   Dimension Engineering’s Dual 5A motor controller came in the mail today, as well as the USB to serial converter off eBay but most important of all another Shapeways order has arrived.

Disclaimer on video/photo quality – camera battery was flat so all photos/videos taken with HTC Magic phone…so might be utter crap…(Actually photos turned out ok…video is a bit dodgy).

What a collection :)
What a collection 🙂

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Heartbeat Pulse – Project Status Update

Dead tired and sleepy but just a quick update post on project status.

mChumby

mChumby is temporary halt as I tried to figure out why I’m not getting battery voltage over the DLC-2 connector, probably a fuse blown.  Time to dig up the Mazda manual.

MFC2

MFC has been decommissioned and the stationary trays are serving quite well holding components, nothing is wasted and everything is recycled.

The WL-520GU will be used again in MFC2 along with the batteries and camera.  The relay board is being sold and replaced with a dual motor controller from Dimension Engineering called the Sabretooth 2×5.  Very easy to interface to via Serial (with Pot, R/C control as options) and very fair ($2.50) shipping to Ausralia!  The bilge pumps will be used again, but this time not as the crappy pumps they are.  The motors taken out of their casing and impellers ripped off.  Waiting for a pair of custom 3D modelled propeller prints to come from Shapeways or some tests.

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Boat should come along nicely… similarly waiting for some custom 3D propellers to come from Shapeways as its almost darn impossible to buy such small props anywhere.  Also printed a couple of shalf couplers, wonder how they’ll turn out.

To do list

  • Iris with PETG and acryllic
  • Propeller hat cufflings
  • Android sonar app
  • Visit Santa Claus
  • More lasercut stuff 🙂

mChumby – Test run

After getting my EasySync USB-Can Adapter it was time to resurrect the mChumby project.  The interface GUI design hasn’t changed much, namely because its been lying idle but I figured it is good enough to try putting it onto the car for a test run.

I didn’t want to fiddle around with getting power to the Chumby, so the test is simply using my trusty old laptop and the EasySync adapter.  Only the speedometer, the tachometer and the accelerator pedal position is attached because again I’m too lazy to fiddle with my cable layout and as such its connected to the Mazda HS-Can bus only rather than the MS-Can where the goodie trip computer information is contained.

Almost every concoction of technology is used ranging from CAN, USB, PHP, HTTP, Shared Memory, XML, Flash, to an obscure programming language called HaXe.  Here is the result :-

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Schnellboot $100 (S-100) – Part 2.1 Fibreglass Hulls Arrived!

The teeny tiny fibre-glass hull’s have arrived!  The beam is narrower than I expected but that’s probably due to being stuffed in the packaging, I’ll double check the scale beam width later.

Photo time!  Standard SD Card for size comparison 😉

Those are gapping big windows for people to shoot through :(
Those are gapping big windows for people to shoot through 🙁

A few more photos…

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Schnellboot $100 (S-100) – Part 2 Proof of Concept

Just heard that the fibre-glass hulls are almost complete and I’ve still done really nothing about the little boat.  A couple of areas of concern are :-

  1. The weight of the equipment
  2. The ability to turn by differential thrust (vector-push?)

To answer the first one is quite easy by weighing the equipment I’ve already purchased in Part 1.

To answer the second one will unfortunately prove to the world I’m inherently lazy and still a kid on the inside.

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